Door 7:  Variations of Ten Thousand Wednesdays

…and, of course, Xie wakes, as she always wakes, in the same place as before, specifically, her casket within the misnamed mausoleum beneath the colonnade of giant yew trees glistening in the quiet rain at three a.m., etc.

She rises, crosses the cold stone floor, barefoot, as previously mentioned, and sits at the white birch vanity, checking her ceremonial makeup, as the surveillance cameras record the entire scene on all thirty-six monitors in the empty guard room—the screens in question showing a grainy blue video of a vacant room that will later, after the crime, be examined frame-by-frame, and marked with technical graphs and notations indicating splatter patterns, lines of fire, and other arcane measurements that will be quite indecipherable, even mysterious, but which will appear to be vaguely divinatory in intent—but of what?

This sense of determinism that seems to weigh upon her every movement gives Xie an air of great weariness, even reluctance, as if she were moving underwater at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. Of course, that makes no sense, none of this does, and yet Xie, finishes brushing her long black hair all the same, and, weeping quietly, walks, head bowed, to the strategically unlocked door, as if deep in prayer, or memorizing her lines for the next scene in a play in which she has no role.

All of this will happen again, we already know this, it’s no surprise: the escape into the city, the weeping woman on the stairs, the murder, the concealment of the body, the search of the abandoned hospital, the capture and pointless interrogation, it all keeps happening, recorded carefully each and every time, repeated but never seen, endlessly re-interpreted as if with every repetition some new clue might be discovered that would provide, at last, the long-sought answer that we’ve been seeking, the key that will reveal everything, but, alas, no…